Purchasing a domain to redirect to a new domain (note same industry) - Black hat or White hat technique?
-
Hi Everyone,
Ok so here is my question. I have a client who sells gourmet tea and gourmet spices. She has a culinary blog. There is a culinary blog that just posted that the website will be shut down in the near future. It has 100% white hat links. Would it be considered black hat to buy the domain and redirect it to my clients blog which is also a culinary blog? I would really like to ask Matt Cutts this question. Does anyone know how to send him questions?
Thanks
Carla
-
Thanks everyone! I feel so much more secure about going after this same industry domain. I agree it is good business.
Thanks
Carla
-
There wouldn't be any problem with buying the domain and the blog, moving the content from it page by page to your domain and redirecting each url on the other blog to the new url where the content can then be found on your domain. It's a fairly normal thing to do when companies merge, get bought, change domains, or go out of business. There's nothing black hat about that--it's just good business.
-
I agree with Mike and like to add that its only black hat if your sites are not related.
-
This makes me want to tell the story of Maille Ohye of Google talking about Canonicals at SMX East 2012. (I really like canonicals and probably talk about them too much on here)
She gave a hypothetical about having a fitness blog and taking over Matt Cutts fitness blog. Where canonicals came in was that she stated one of the primary uses for a cross-domain canonical was in passing equity from one site to the other site that will eventually be replacing it without causing confusion for users. So in the hypothetical she took over Matt Cutts' fitness blog, placed canonicals from his pages to their relevant counterpart on her site, moved content over as necessary, and placed a notice on the homepage of the Matt Cutts blog that it was going away but will be rolled into the Maille Ohye blog. This gives people enough time to switch over their bookmarks without bouncing from being redirected to somewhere they didn't expect. The canonicals would move equity to the main site, eventually pages would begin swapping out in the index, and eventually you would 301 redirect everything to their relevant counterparts on the main site once enough time has passed.
Following things that way I would assume that should be considered completely White Hat.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Choice of domain
Hi. I want to build a new site that is optimised for a training product that we have. We have an existing domain which I'm considering pointing at this new site. This domain is one of the new .training TLDs. Let's call this domain foo.training where my main keyword to optimise for will be "foo training". I've also looked and can see that foo-training.com is available. I read up on best practices for domains here : https://moz.com/learn/seo/domain My question is will the .training domain be seen as "spammy" in any way? Am I better to just go ahead and register the .com?
Technical SEO | | rmcatalyst0 -
Goals for Sub Domain
I have created separate account for my sub domain and created goal for that, we have sales force data base to capture the leads.The problem which i'am facing is comparing to the goals and Sales force leads is very much difference.Goals leads are showing huge than sales force leads. 2) When lead is creating from organic source but in goals it's showing referral lead.
Technical SEO | | Anshul.S0 -
If I switch my domain name, will I keep link juice from redirect?
I am moving one of my sites wellington-florida-homes.com to a new domain (wellingtonfloridahomes.com). Most of our link-juice is coming from another domain we purchased (theshockleyteam.com) that is redirected to our primary site. If I simply redirect theshockleyteam.com to our new domain (wellingtonfloridahomes.com) I will still have the link juice passing through, right? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | RickyShockley0 -
Migrating a better performing domain to a less well performing domain
I have a customer who has many domain names and assets but she's wanting to consolidate some of them to help her simplify things for her customers but mostly she wants to build up her website through which she sells products. Grief Reflection - www.griefreflection.com is a personal journal that she's keeping to process the impending death of her husband and it's also linked to her business website which sells healing from grief types of products. Storybooks for Healing - www.storybooksforhealing.com is the website through which she sells workbooks and memory books for people who want to keep the memory of their loved one alive after they've gone. I've setup both of these domains as campaigns and have been looking at the metrics for both. The grief reflection blog out performs the storybooks for healing website. If we merge the two then the Grief Reflection blog would likely become a subdirectory under www.storybooksforhealing.com and be more fully integrated which she thinks will help her visitors not get confused while navigating her website. www.griefreflection.com has 12,637 links while www.storybooksforhealing.com has 1,462. Also, Google has indexed 380 pages of Grief Reflection and only 100 pages for Storybooks for Healing, though that may be because there are fewer pages to index. Grief reflection also has a 4.36 mozRank and 5.30 mozTrust, where Storybooks has 4.13 mozRank and 5.15 mozTrust. Should I counsel her to keep these domains separate? If not, would simply setting up 301 redirects from the www.griefreflection.com domain name to the new subdirectory under www.storybooksforhealing.com be the way to go? Thank you ever so much for any wisdom anyone can provide.
Technical SEO | | ChristiMc0 -
Double 301 redirect
Hi together, due to some technical reasons I have redirect (301) an existing link two times. Example: www.mydomain.com/root/site.html > 301 > www.mydomain.com/site.html > 301 www.mydomain.com/site_new.html Is there anybody how has got some experience like doing a double redirect? What about link juice? Best regards Steffen
Technical SEO | | steffen_0 -
Buying a new domain
Hello guys! We are in process of buying a new domain. How can we be sure that this domain is not blacklisted and are there any steps to take in order to be sure that whatever we are buying is actually in "good shape"? Thanks much!
Technical SEO | | echo10 -
A client will be translating their entire site into French in addition to English. For SEO purposes, should I host it on the same domain or create its own dedicated domain?
The current site is a long-standing site with good authority and a good number of links. Thanks....
Technical SEO | | JamesBSEO0 -
Question about domain redirects
One of my clients has an odd domain redirect situation. See if you can get your head round this: Domain A is set-up as a domain alias of Domain B Entering domain A or domain B takes you to default.asp on domain B. The default.asp includes VB script to check the HTTP_HOST variable. It checks whether the main doman name for domain A is present in the HTTP_HOST and if so redirects it to domain A/sub-folder/index.htm. If not present it redirects to domain B/index.htm. In both cases the redirect uses a response.Redirect clause. I think what is trying to be achieved is to redirect requests to Domain A to a sub-folder of Domain B. It works but seems extremely convoluted. Can anyone see problems with this set-up? Will link juice be lost along the redirect paths?
Technical SEO | | bjalc20110
